Gallery allegedly stole Grey Gardens estate's Jackie Kennedy painting: suit

It’s the highest of high-society legal battles.

The estate of one of the “Grey Gardens” socialites has filed suit against an East Hampton art gallery, claiming that a decades-old portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is in fact a stolen family heirloom.

Representatives of the late Edith (Little Edie) Bouvier Beale — one half of the reclusive, formerly wealthy mother-daughter duo whose lives were chronicled in the 1976 documentary — insist they have the rightful claim on the painting that went missing in the late 1960s.

Edith (Little Edie) Beale and Onassis were first cousins.

The target of the suit is Terry Wallace, an established East End art dealer who insists the painting legitimately belongs to him.

Wallace told the Daily News he has no intention of turning over the prized portrait without a fight.

“I have clear title to the painting and I have clear ownership of the painting,” he said.

Wallace says he bought the work in the “late 1980s from a very reputable antiques dealer.” But he stopped short of identifying the dealer.

The piece of art at the center of the high-brow legal brawl in Long Island federal court was painted in 1950 long before then-19-year-old Jacqueline Lee Bouvier met John F. Kennedy.

It was commissioned by the future First Lady’s father, John Vernou Bouvier III — a well-heeled stockbroker nicknamed “Black Jack” — and painted by Irwin Hoffman.

Neither side would put a price tag on the painting but that’s perhaps the only thing they agree on.

Before he died, Black Jack gave the portrait to his sister Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, known as “Big Edie.”

Big Edie and Little Edie lived together at a decaying mansion in East Hampton known as Grey Gardens.

The lawsuit said there was at least one burglary in the 1960s or 1970s. But the Beales, who feuded with local officials, didn’t report the theft.

Before Little Edie's 2002 death in Florida at age 84, she reminded her nephew and future estate executor, that valuables like the painting were filched from Grey Gardens.

The suit said a 1998 Hamptons Magazine article showcased the portrait. Then in 2004, Beale’s nephew’s wife, Eva, spotted it at Wallace Gallery.

When she asked Wallace about the portrait's origins, he told her the same thing he would later tell The News — that it came from a dealer he refused to identify who had since died.

In 2016, Eva Beale found the 1998 article in Little Edie’s records and determined it was the stolen painting she was referring to years ago.

The suit was filed Thursday after Wallace rebuffed Beale's request to hand over the painting or at least provide information on its provenance.

“After the gallery repeatedly denied its requests for return of the Jackie portrait and for information about its provenance — information regularly provided to art buyers in the ordinary course of business — the Estate was forced to commence this action,” said Megan Noh, one of the estate's lawyers.

Noh called the portrait “a long-lost heirloom, a piece of the Bouvier family's legacy and, indeed, of American history.

“The family is very much looking forward to being reunited with it,” she added.

But Wallace said he wouldn't risk wrecking his business or reputation with questionable works after running his gallery for the past 25 years.

“If the painting was stolen, I would be the first one to give it back to them,” he said.